For the love of airplanes and travel

Readings and reflections about the ways we get to our favorite places

My mind overflows with hopes, and worries, and to-do lists. I bet yours does, too. [I have a dreaded dentist appointment today— do wish me luck. My disability memoir will have a chapter dedicated to my falls and their impact on my dental health.]

Many people schedule their family vacations for the summer, but I’ve always found family vacations to be expensive and laborious undertakings that require more coordination and efforts than what they yield. I’m more a random road trip kind of person, or travel bare bones with a friend.

My favorite traveling companion is M. We have visited several continents and several locations that would make the Department of State blush. My travels have changed my perspective, and even my writing, because I’m not a sightseeing, bus trip kind of traveler.

Having tea at a shop in old Sana’a (Yemen), photo by me

M. used to work for AirFrance. In his day, if you worked five years you received free airfare for life. So he worked for five years and a day. And M. had a talent for resolving involuntary reroutes, because he had an interest in airplanes and flight paths and knew every route flown by AirFrance.

When we flew together, he would sometimes pick routes based on which planes would fly them. And when he learned about my fascination with the Paris metro, he made sure we rode every subway line, including the driverless one.

Airplane Books for Airplane People

Most of us don’t think about what happens behind the scenes when we travel, unless something doesn’t work. Some people have their own fascinations with airplanes or trains or travel routes. The main character in Kate Folk’s Sky Daddy fetishized airplanes, and hoped to die in “marriage” to one, and a specific one at that. To the main character, the ultimate union with a plane would end in a plane crash.

I read Sky Daddy and some older titles involving planes and flight attendants in preparation for the release of Dawn O’Harra’s Any Landing You Walk Away from… We will be releasing this debut novel August 28. (Cover reveal and excerpt for paid subscribers at the end of this newsletter.)

The Flight Attendant

At Tatnuck Booksellers in Massachusetts, I picked up a signed copy of Chris Bohjalian’s The Flight Attendant, recently released as a HBO Max television comedy-drama. I read the book and watched several episodes (featuring The Big Bang Theory’s Kelly Cuoco as the flight attendant) and found some of the changes interesting, swapping Istanbul from the book for Bangkok on the television program, for instance.

The story is a murder mystery/thriller as we see our flight attendant protagonist wake up next to a dead body in a hotel. In the series, the dead person is a character. He takes up space in the main character’s head and shows us everything the other points of view covered in the novel.

Any Landing You Walk Away From

In the Parisian Phoenix universe, O’Harra has crafted her airplane novel as a fictionalized amalgamation of her career, which started in the early 1980s during deregulation of the industry. The book follows May, our protagonist, through her experiences getting a job as a flight attendant, training, and then the adventures she and her peers had on-the-job. Nothing quite as exciting as murder, though.

The book reveals some of the shadier practices of the charter industry and what happens when the aging planes malfunction. It also provides a look at where the crews would go and the dangers they faced when flying to places like Libya.

AN INTERVIEW WITH DAWN O’HARRA

1. Tell us about yourself.

I live in the Pocono Mountains,Pa., where my family has been for generations. I have always loved the outdoors and still enjoy hiking, running, skiing, and watching wildlife. Other special interests include travel (of course!), history, and many areas of science. These interests steered my education and career path. I earned a degree in history/political science and a degree and masters in wildlife biology. I left flying to teach science. I come from a long line of teachers, even my great-grandmother taught in a one-room schoolhouse.

2. Why did you become a flight attendant?

My first grade teacher— young, beautiful, and adored by the whole class— told us that she was leaving teaching to become a flight attendant. Her first name was May, just like my protagonist. I thought about my teacher often throughout childhood. I developed an interest in airplanes, and my parents would take myself and my siblings to civilian and military airports to watch planes. In my college years, I started hanging around the local airport, taking lessons when I could afford it. It seemed a natural progression to be working a job in the air and taking lessons at the same time.

3. What do people get wrong about the job?

The public associates the job with a glamorous existence. I did, too! What people don't realize is the amount of hard work involved. It is a mentally and physically demanding job with long hours.

4. How much of the novel is true?

Most characters are combinations of people I know or met. There are several events in the book that are completely true, others are events that I combined or embellished.

5. How much do you resemble May?

May and I have some things in common: our love of travel, flying, and the outdoors. A key difference is that her career would always be flying, whereas I wanted to explore additional interests and decided.

6. What were your favorite parts of being a flight attendant?

I loved the camaraderie and the unique experiences we shared. How wonderful is it to explore a foreign country with a group of your friends? I loved discovering just how diverse and surprising the traveling public can be, exploring new places, and, of course, the flying itself.

7. May's ultimate goal is to get her license. Did you share this goal?

Like May, I had many starts and stops getting my pilot’s license, mostly for money reasons. After ground school, lessons, soloing, cross-country flights, and passing tests, I felt a great sense of accomplishment. Flying is a way of experiencing reality like no other. You get a different perspective of the Earth. You experience the size of things, wide open space, and get a better idea of your place in it. When flying or traveling, I always get the chance to say "Wow!" I love saying "Wow!"

A famed historical pilot, Saint-Exupéry, in Tale of the Rose

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote the wonderful illustrated story, The Little Prince, but is also one of the 20th Century’s most daring aviators. He disappeared in flight during World War II. He wrote and he flew, and the two arts fed each other. Before his renowned novella, he wrote novels about flying, Southern Mail and Night Flight, and a memoir, Wind, Sand and Stars, and Flight to Arras at the same time as The Little Prince.

Saint-Exupéry experienced a passion for flying akin to O’Harra’s thoughts on perspective and “wow” factor. On the night he met the young window, Consuelo, whom he would eventually marry he insisted on taking her for a flight. And this was in 1930! I recently discovered the memoir she wrote about their turbulent marriage, The Tale of the Rose, and it proved a captivating expression of the era, a French hero, and what an interesting woman Consuelo was.

And in the strange sort of overlap we love at Parisian Phoenix, she lived in the same building of Peggy Guggenheim, the subject of our recent poetry release, Group Portrait. The Guggenheim and Saint-Exupéry households certainly overlapped:

"Another charming incident took place at Greta Garbo's house which we had rented. Our neighbors were Mrs. Guggenheim, the mine owner, and her daughter, Peggy, who was full of admiration for Tonio. She would lend me a hand with little things around the house. Our dog, Hannibal, a bulldog, was ill natured, but he very much liked Peggy... Our refrigerator couldn't hold all the bottles of champagne, and Peggy had the idea of burying them in the garden, under the snow..."

At that time, Peggy had taken in Max Ernst, whom she had snatched from the clutches of the Nazis. Then Max Ernst married Peggy... he would come take refuge at our house... He came, after having confided to Peggy,'...[St Ex]'s getting ready to go off to the war, and he's a little worried about leaving her alone in New York.'"

— Tale of the Rose, pages 300-301

YOU CAN ORDER Group Portrait on Amazon here, Barnes & Noble here or Bookshop.org.

Motorhome Gypsies and Road Trips

Speaking of travel and new releases, Motorhome Gypsies: Practical RV Living Advice and Real World Adventures launched officially this week. If flying isn’t your thing— this is just the book you need to embrace travel on the road. Chock full of tips, tricks and travel stories, Rachel C. Thompson and Lisa Cross will entertain you and teach you to avoid common pitfalls.

Rachel also has a new essay featured on the Parisian Phoenix blog about their recent trip to Pennsylvania.

“We wouldn’t be motorhome gypsies if we didn’t have a problem on the road. This was our first time out in a while with the 19-foot Sunline travel trailer which quickly turned an adventure into a disaster and back again. Let me explain.

We planned to leave Florida and arrive in Pennsylvania three days later. after one full hook-up stay at a winery campground and one-night boondocking up in them there hills. It’s summer and hot, but not high in the mountains at night along I-81 North in Virgina. This good plan went sideways in South Carolina after six hours of driving as the truck broke down in a region where we knew nobody…”

Read the full essay here.

YOU CAN ORDER Motorhome Gypsies on Amazon here, Barnes & Noble here or Bookshop.org.

And if you want a novel featuring a road trip from New York City to Chicago, may I recommend the fourth volume in my horror series, Road Trip? I really hope to release the fifth volume, Absolution, later this year. See all the Fashion and Fiends books on Amazon here.

Preserve Your Own Journey

And don’t forget… If you want to learn how to tell YOUR story with the world, I have a hands-on memoir writing workshop happing August 16. I promise, I can help anyone draft their story and each participant will get a free book in addition to professional guidance.

• 1 to 4 p.m. at Blank Space Community Center, 85 Makefield Road Unit 7, Yardley, Pa., 19067. Tickets will be $40 and will include print materials.

In my current journey, I’m enjoying the sunshine, and the new screens my daughter built on our sunporch, and evening listening to Summer Sunshine reggae on Spotify. My daughter and I are watching Call the Midwives together and it seems in keeping with my mid-20th century theme these days.

As always,

— Angel

For less than $2 an issue, you can support PARISIAN PHOENIX BOOKISH BABBLE as a paid subscriber. Benefits include: 1. Free chapters and excerpts of new books. 2. Curated lists and annotated reviews of podcasts, writing books, and bookstores. 3. Full, unlimited access to ALL of my slides from my writing workshops. PLUS unlimited access to the archives of all my posts.

Today, paid subscribers have access to this cover reveal and an excerpt of Dawn O’Harra’s Any Landing You Walk Away From… Next, I’ll be offering in-depth review of writing craft book, The Intuitive Author by Tiffany Yates Martin, whose haircut I commandeered after the 2025 Write Stuff Conference. AND I have added to the list of upcoming craft books Publishing 101 and The Business of Being a Writer by Jane Friedman, Successful Self-Publishing by Joanna Penn, and Let’s Get Digital by David Gaughran.

In this excerpt, we find May, our main character, interviewing for her dream job— as a flight attendant.

“Well, no matter, let's get on with your language test shall we? So you speak Spanish then?” Roger, the interviewer, asked.

May sat dumb-struck as he rattled off incomprehensible questions at her with a Castilian accent.

Think of something, think of anything! her mind screamed as she tried to hide the overwhelming terror welling inside her. What little Spanish she did remember drained from her consciousness.